NS&D Monitor
5/30/2014
Guard Fired in Y-12 Break-in Seeking Job Back
Kirk Garland, the security guard fired after three elderly protesters broke into the Y-12 National Security Complex in July of 2012, is continuing to try to get his old job back and is seeking reimbursement for lost wages. Garland, who was the first security guard to encounter the three Plowshares protesters outside the Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility at around 4:30 a.m., remains emphatic that he did nothing wrong and followed procedures. He and his union, the International Guards Union of America, are seeking a financial settlement to compensate him for what they state was an unfair firing and great financial loss over the past two years. The grievance filed in 2012 has worked its way through the labor system and the 53-year-old Garland returned to Y-12 in mid-April for a six-hour arbitration hearing at the New Hope Center. His fate is now in the hands of federal arbitrator, although there apparently is no definitive timeline for when that ruling will come.
Whatever the outcome, Garland got a chance to state his case. "Like I told the arbitrator … we can sit here and you can scrutinize me all you want, but at the end of the day I stopped their actions, I detained them, I called for backup, we arrested them, I testified against them and they’re in prison. How much more picture perfect can it be than that? And I went home to my family, and nobody got killed and nobody got hurt," he said in a recent interview.
Garland not only lost his job and two vehicles as a result of the financial stress. Last fall, he also was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, which he attributes to the stress of the situation and possibly the long-time exposure to hazardous materials at Y-12 and two other DOE sites—Rocky Flats and Pantex—where he worked before coming to Oak Ridge. His wife also has had some serious health problems, and within a few days of his termination by Wackenhut on Aug. 10, 2012, his health coverage was discontinued.
‘I’m Doing Good Right Now’
Garland later got a job as a prison guard at the Morgan County Correctional Facility, but there was a big drop in income. While a member of the elite protective force at Y-12, his pay was good and there were a lot of opportunities for overtime at the Oak Ridge. Plant. According to Garland, he worked 1,200 hours of overtime at Y-12 in one year and earned close to $100,000. Even after the number of overtime hours dropped, he said he still made about $85,000. At the prison, he makes about $28,000 annually, but he said he enjoys the work and is glad to have the health benefits. His medicine for MS would cost him about $5,000 a month if he didn’t have health insurance, he said, but fortunately his share is now only about $10 a month. "I’m doing good right now," he said.
In looking back at the events at Y-12, Garland emphasized that by the time he was dispatched to the protest site outside HEUMF, the protesters had already compromised security at the site and set in motion a chain of events that would ultimately force contractor executives to resign and would lead Wackenhut Services-Oak Ridge to lose its contract. The three protesters—Sister Megan Rice, Michael Walli and Greg Boertje-Obed—didn’t offer any resistance or try to flee when the guard arrived in his security vehicle.
From Hero to Zero
In the hours that followed, Garland said he was repeatedly praised and patted on the back by his bosses at Wackenhut and others. He said one of his supervisors even suggested he might be due a commendation for his handling of the unique situation in a high-security setting. That changed, however, in the days that passed, and he was warned by his union chief that he might be forced to take a few days off as a penalty. But he still wasn’t expecting to get fired. As some of the investigations were completed, the reports graded Garland harshly, saying the he was too casual in his approach to the peace activists. "I was a hero for about two days and then I turned into a zero," he said. On Aug. 10, almost two weeks after the break-in, Garland was fired for not following procedures.
Asked if he’d return to work at Y-12 if he could, Garland said, "Yeah, I’d go back. Sure would. I enjoyed my job and took my job seriously." If the federal government and its contractors had done their job, kept the security hardware up to standards and not reduced the number of guards and patrols in the months before the incident, his interaction with the protesters wouldn’t have even been an issue, Garland said.
Y-12 Experiences Additional Departures Beyond Layoffs
B&W Y-12, the managing contractor at the Y-12 National Security Complex, confirmed this week that there had been some additional work departures in addition to those approved as part of the Voluntary Separation Program at the Oak Ridge plant. B&W Y-12 President Dave Richardson said 106 employees at the Y-12 National Security Complex were approved for the Voluntary Separation Program, an incentive-based effort to reduce the workforce to meet the staffing needs identified by Consolidated Nuclear Security, which will replace B&W, effective July 1. According to B&W Y-12 communications chief Bill Reis, the total number of applicants was 148.
That was significantly below the targeted numbers, but Bill Reis, B&W’s vice president for communications, said some other Y-12 employees had also left the payroll. He confirmed that nine construction workers lost their jobs and that there were 56 "immediate retirements" at the Oak Ridge plant. But he noted those job reductions were outside the VSP process. "Construction workers are assigned from the union hall to support specific projects, and when the projects are completed, they simply go back to the hall to await future assignments. Construction workers were not eligible for participation in the VSP. There were 9 construction workers recently released. There were also 56 employees who elected to retire who were not eligible for (and who did not participate in) the VSP," Reis said via email.
Asked if CNS was satisfied with the VSP results and if additional job cuts are anticipated, spokesman Jason Bohne said, "The Voluntary Separation Program was designed to achieve staff reductions to allow CNS to perform the mission with safety, security, and high quality, while also creating a more cost-efficient organization. Combining the Pantex and Y-12 sites will create redundancies and over-staffing in some areas, so those areas were selected for VSP eligibility. The forecasted CNS staffing levels are expected to be achieved through a combination of the VSP and other voluntary attrition such as retirements and resignations. There are no planned staff reduction programs between now and our contract start on July 1. After July 1, we will need time to assess the impact of reductions that were lower than expected in the VSP areas and the number of announced retirements in other areas. We will continue to communicate our intentions well in advance of any potential actions."
DOE Waiting to Decide on Action Against ORNL for Incidents
The Department of Energy has said it wants to wait until the investigation reports have been completed from two accidents at Oak Ridge National Laboratory before deciding whether to take any actions against ORNL contractor UT-Battelle. Claire Sinclair, a spokeswoman in DOE’s site office at ORNL, earlier said there was no plan to take actions against the lab contractor. But, in a follow-up, she emphasized that DOE has not ruled out the possibility. "Although no fines, penalties or work shutdown has occurred, that does not preclude DOE from taking action," Sinclair said. "When the final investigation reports are released DOE will determine if any additional actions need to be taken."
Two accidents this spring have put safety in a spotlight at the Oak Ridge lab. The first accident occurred March 31 at an off-site warehouse used to store surplus materials. A lab worker suffered two broken legs and a broken thumb when a heavy piece of physics equipment fell on him as he and a co-worker were attempting to load the 1,400-pound "scattering chamber" onto a truck. The top-heavy chamber reportedly tipped over at the uneven juncture of the truck and the loading dock, trapping the worker underneath. The injured worker was taken to the University of Tennessee Medical Center and remains out of work.
Less than a month later, on Easter Sunday, a fire and explosion blew out the window panes of a fume hood in an unattended chemical lab at one of ORNL’s newest research facilities—the Chemical and Materials Sciences Building.
Equipment Malfunction Believed Cause of Explosion
According to lab spokesman David Keim, a preliminary investigation blamed the incident on an equipment malfunction. A hot plate with a stirring mechanism somehow turned itself on, heating a flask that contained organic solvents, he said. The vaporized fluid ultimately caught fire and exploded inside the hood. No one was in the lab at the time. An employee who entered the building on the holiday afternoon smelled smoke and reported it. While there were no injuries or major damage to the facility, the unusual circumstances are still being studied.
ORNL Director Thom Mason made the accidents the focus of a Director’s Forum April 24. Mason addressed the safety ramifications, stressing that adopting new or better procedures isn’t enough to maintain safety. There has to be a workplace culture that identifies hazards and calls them out before work proceeds, he said. Sinclair said DOE permitted the ORNL contractor to conduct its own investigation of the loading-dock accident —in part because of the lab’s past performance on safety. Federal officials also took part in the investigation, she said. "The department is reviewing the adequacy and completeness of the investigation," Sinclair said
She indicated that the ORNL contractor responded quickly, seriously and thoroughly after each of the events. While the two accidents occurred in a short time frame, they were unrelated and very different, she said. The investigation of the dock accident concluded that the cause was directly linked to the behavior of the workers and was not indicative of good safety preparations. "There were multiple opportunities to raise concerns about the top-heavy nature of the equipment, but for one reason or another these opportunities were missed," the lab reported in the April 28 issue of ORNL Today.
Lab: Safety Equipment Operated Perfectly
Sinclair said the lab used internal and outside safety experts to look at the two accidents. Keim said a graduate student had been in the chemistry lab earlier in the day of the Easter explosion and had used the fume hood in question. But the student’s notes "were meticulous" and fully explained the activities that took place, supporting the conclusion that a fire later in the day had to be due to an equipment failure, he said. The good news is that the modern safety systems in place at the Chemical and Materials Sciences Building worked as they should, Keim said. The ventilation system carried out the smoke, funneling it through high-efficiency filters, even after the fume hood broke apart. As a result, the sprinkler systems did not activate in the lab or in the hallway outside because they weren’t needed, he said.
When firefighters arrived in response to a call, Keim said, there was only a small flame still burning on the hot plate—perhaps an hour after the chemical explosion. He said there were a few other scientists working in other parts of the building on holiday weekend, and they didn’t even know the situation was taking place in the chemical lab. "There are multiple layers of safety built into these pieces of equipment," he said. "The fume hood did its job."
